Athlete Series: The Final Push To IMCA

Three Weeks! Kelly is three weeks out from Ironman California. The last weeks of training have been a whirlwind of swim, bike, run for him as we hone in race power and pace. Today I’ll dive in to what we’ve been doing since the Big Day to get him prepped and ready to race.

The Build Phase

Once completing the Base Phase of training (laying the foundation), we moved on to the Build Phase (specificity). Since Kelly had time leading into Ironman California, were able to hang out in the Build Phase for several weeks. In the first block of Build Phase, Kelly completed the Big Day. This was his first real race simulation set. This set us up to get even more specific for the second round of Build Phase work.

After a recovery week, we cut his hours from 13 hours down to 7.5, Kelly was rested and ready to start the final push. With the exception of some work travel we had to account for, his training has been cruising along nicely.

Workouts

Here is what we have been focusing on in each discipline to boost fitness and confidence going into Ironman.

• Swim - The Build Phase encompasses a lot here. Focus areas for the swim include Endurance, Force, Muscular Endurance, Speed Skills, etc. We’ve been working on a little bit of everything here! Kelly sees a lot of muscular endurance sets because we want to make sure his body doesn’t fatigue for the long swim required of him on race day. These sets stave off muscular fatigue and allow him to swim with good form (and faster!) for longer. An example of a muscular endurance swim set:

  • Warm Up - 600-800 including drills

  • Main Set - 5x500 Varying

    • 5x100 at threshold

    • 500 pull steady

    • 5x100 alt. kick & I.M.

    • 500 at threshold

    • 500 pull steady

  • Cool Down - 200 choice

• Bike - The Build Phase focuses mainly on Endurance, Muscular Endurance and Force. We focus on all of these during this block of training to keep him ready to go, but also keep him sharp. Kelly sees a lot of work at power higher than what he’ll do during Ironman as well as race pace efforts so he is comfortable holding that power for the race. An example workout I give during this block includes a lot of push/pulling:

  • Warm Up - Anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour (depending on how long you want the ride to be)

  • Main Set - 20 min. blocks switching between zone 2 power and zone 3 power. Stay in aero and keep cadence 85-95. You can adjust the number of blocks. Minimum would be two, maximum five or six.

  • Cool Down - 15 minutes

• Run - The Build Phase focuses mainly on Endurance, Muscular Endurance and Speed Skills. That is what I have Kelly focus on as well. He sees a bit of all. We get Endurance on his long runs, Speed on his easier days that include strides, and Muscular Endurance on his work days. An example workout Kelly gets here would be 2ks. Not only are we working muscular endurance, but also mental toughness…these sets are long!

  • Warm Up - You can do miles or minutes and include strides to loosen up.

  • Main Set - 2k efforts at faster than IM pacing (typically tempo-y) with 400 jog recovery. You can do up to 6 reps.

  • Cool Down - Miles or minutes of easy running.

Numbers

Kelly has been hitting his target power and paces and his fitness is trending up in a solid way. Here is where he is right now:

• CTL: 76

• ATL: 96

• TSB: -13

We are going to keep his TSB negative for the next week or so and then taper for IMCA, which will get that number positive and race ready! After having the Covid setback in August, Kelly has worked hard (and smart) to recover from it and get his fitness back to a good place for California. While we won’t see the CTL numbers we would have seen without that, we are in a really good place for this race. The final countdown is on!